Windows Defender prevents access to BitTorrent and uTorrent services.
Windows Defender prevents access to BitTorrent and uTorrent services.
In the last 24 hours Windows Defender has flagged BitTorrent as a threat on my laptop. I haven’t used BitTorrent recently and never experienced any problems before, so I’m puzzled about why it’s raising concerns. I understand I can whitelist it, but I don’t have any insight into what’s causing the alert initially. Also, I’m not downloading games from cracked sources.
Deluge and Transmission are both open-source and free tools. I use Deluge on my laptop as needed, and I have a Transmission Server running on my FreeNAS server. From your screenshot, it seems suspicious—why would uTorrent have an EXE in the appdata folder? That doesn’t make sense; the EXE should be in the Program Files directory.
It's quite unusual to install software directly into AppData. It often indicates a specific setup requirement or compatibility issue. The advantage of placing the executable there might be ensuring it runs within the intended environment or avoiding conflicts with other system files.
Looking into this shows these apps often use a quick coding method. The correct approach is to place them in Program Files. AppData handles user data like settings and configurations, allowing each person to keep their own preferences. While installing directly to that folder works, it mainly focuses on Active Directory roaming profiles.
Possible update or modification request for unwanted software or antivirus changes
Thread cleaned up. If you don't want to help, just ignore this and continue. Avoid replying if you think the comments are unnecessary or unhelpful; report only if needed.
@kagarium mentioned a potential issue flagging uTorrent as a PUA. Windows Defender updates its detection lists regularly, likely catching it during scans. I've previously mined crypto and set up folder exclusions for those files, which also trigger PUA alerts. Updated this on November 11, 2020 by wkdpaul.